Holders of five cryptocurrency products tied to President Donald Trump were sitting on at least $4.7 billion in losses, largely on paper, while Trump reported at least $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income for 2025 in his latest financial disclosure, according to Public Citizen and the disclosure document.
Public Citizen’s estimate places the steepest losses on buyers of the TRUMP memecoin, which launched in January 2025, three days before Trump’s inauguration. The advocacy group calculated that about 1 million of the roughly 1.6 million retail wallets that bought TRUMP on decentralized exchanges were underwater by a combined $3.2 billion.
The figures draw a sharp contrast between the financial results reported by buyers of Trump-linked crypto assets and the income disclosed by Trump from businesses connected to the sector. They also arrive as Congress considers crypto-market legislation that advocacy groups want amended with tougher ethics limits for elected officials with digital-asset business interests.
Trump buyers account for most estimated losses
Public Citizen said only about $400 million of losses associated with TRUMP had been realized, meaning holders had sold their tokens below their purchase price. The remaining losses were unrealized, reflecting the difference between what wallets paid for tokens and the value of holdings that had not yet been sold.
TRUMP reached an all-time high of $73.43 in January 2025 before falling to about $2.73 on the Friday cited by Public Citizen. That decline placed a large share of the token’s buyer base underwater, particularly wallets that entered after the opening surge.
The group said wallets that purchased TRUMP during its first two days captured nearly 90% of gains earned by retail buyers. Such early concentration is common in memecoin markets, where buyers able to acquire tokens near launch can sell into later demand, leaving subsequent purchasers exposed when trading momentum reverses.
Trump’s own allocation differed from that of public buyers, according to Public Citizen. The organization said Trump-linked entities received token allocations rather than buying TRUMP in the market, while other revenue connected to the project came through licensing fees. That structure means the market losses estimated for retail purchasers do not directly mirror the economics for parties that received tokens at issuance.
Wlfi and Trump Media add to the total
World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token accounted for at least another $1 billion of the estimated losses, Public Citizen said. Its calculation included a roughly $1.04 billion paper loss at Nasdaq-listed AI Financial Corp., which acquired 7.28 billion WLFI tokens for about $1.46 billion in August 2025.
Public Citizen said AI Financial’s shares had dropped 91% since the company partnered with World Liberty Financial, falling from $7.04 to $0.642. The group included that market-value decline in its WLFI-related loss estimate.
Treating the decline in a public company’s shares as part of token-related losses produces a broader measure than a simple calculation of WLFI’s market price. It captures the effect on a corporate buyer whose valuation became tied, at least in part, to its large exposure to the token.
Trump Media’s bitcoin treasury represented another $450 million in paper losses in Public Citizen’s analysis. The company held 9,477 bitcoin as of June 30, purchased for about $1.006 billion and valued at roughly $557 million, according to the advocacy group.
The report also assigned at least $9.3 million in losses to buyers of three Trump Digital Trading Card collections. It found no losses for USD1 holders because the stablecoin maintained its dollar peg. USD1 is issued by World Liberty Financial and is designed to trade near $1, making its risk profile different from a volatile memecoin, a governance token, or bitcoin held on a corporate balance sheet.
On-chain data points to losses among Ethereum buyers
Separate data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen found that 82% of roughly 31,000 retail addresses that bought the newly issued tokens on Ethereum held less value than they initially put in. Those wallets showed combined losses of about $54 million, according to Nansen.
The Nansen figure covers a defined set of on-chain wallets and should not be read as a complete count of every person who bought Trump-linked assets. A single person can control several wallets, while some purchases can occur through venues that do not reveal individual wallet-level activity. Even so, the data offers a view of how losses were distributed among identifiable retail addresses rather than only in aggregate dollar terms.
The concentration of gains among the earliest TRUMP buyers, alongside Nansen’s estimate of widespread losses among tracked Ethereum addresses, illustrates the uneven results that can develop when political branding intersects with thinly distributed token ownership and intense launch-period speculation.
Ethics questions move alongside market legislation
Public Citizen’s estimates have added to criticism over Trump’s financial ties to digital-asset businesses while his administration oversees policy affecting the sector. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued that public officials should not profit from businesses connected to rules they are helping shape, following a White House gathering with digital-asset industry leaders.
Advocacy groups are pressing lawmakers to attach ethics provisions to the proposed CLARITY Act, a bill intended to establish a market-structure framework for digital assets. Their proposals include requirements that could force the president to divest cryptocurrency businesses.
The political debate extends beyond token prices. National rules on trading platforms, stablecoin issuance, bank charters, securities classification, and decentralized-finance activity could affect the operating environment for projects tied to Trump and his family while also influencing the value and liquidity available to holders.
Public Citizen’s $4.7 billion estimate does not mean every holder has locked in a loss; most of the figure is based on unsold positions and would change with market prices. Yet the gap between reported crypto-related income and the estimated losses borne by token and treasury holders places the financial incentives around Trump-linked digital assets at the center of the policy debate now unfolding in Washington.
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